


unspoken

by Liu



Series: something in the water [2]
Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: M/M, basically eddie's viewpoint, there might be more later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-05
Updated: 2014-12-05
Packaged: 2018-02-28 07:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2723219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liu/pseuds/Liu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eddie really thought he had it all this time; turns out, ‘all’ might be just a little too much to handle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	unspoken

**Author's Note:**

> I had to write the events of 'guilt' as Eddie saw it... again, mild spoilers for ep08.  
> Super-Eddie-centric.

Eddie really thought he had it all this time; turns out, ‘all’ might be just a little too much to handle. 

When he was first transferred to Central City, it went down the same way as his first days in Keystone, more or less. He walked in, smiling, and he could see several guys immediately giving him suspicious, sideways stares. They didn’t exactly bother lowering their voices in the last few days – Detective Pretty-Face was one of the better ones, from what he could hear. He tried bringing some donuts for everyone, and he was labeled a suck-up; he tried dismissing it all with jokes, and people took it too seriously (like, who in hell would actually keep an arrest count, Eddie had no idea). They knew he was good; it wasn’t about that. He wouldn’t have been transferred if he couldn’t live up to the expectations and everyone knew it (or at the very least, nobody could come up with some background info on why Detective Thawne was assigned to Central City). 

But somehow, Eddie never really knows what to do to make people like him. He’s never known; maybe he was born under a special star that makes him irritate people without actually trying. When he was a kid, he was often told he was too fat, too short, too weird… when his growth spur hit and he started exercising regularly, it was good for a while. Now, it sometimes seems to Eddie like he’s overdoing that exercise thing a little, even though it was never about physical appearance for him (well, not much, anyway). He likes being fit – he likes burning off nervousness and frustration of the day by moving his body until he can’t anymore. But he’s been hearing this ‘Detective Pretty-Face’ thing too often, and he doesn’t like being taken at face value, being assessed on the basis of his hair or teeth or shoulders instead of his skills. 

So when he’s first confronted with Barry Allen, Eddie’s expectations are not high. Eddie’s made peace with who he is long, long ago, and he’s never been a stupid guy, but he’s no genius when it comes to science. He knows enough to be good at his job – but he also knows that his job is chasing bad guys, not analyzing their hair or blood for evidence. He’s also met enough people in Allen’s position who looked down on guys like Eddie and made their dislike known. 

Allen doesn’t make any jabs at Eddie’s intelligence, even though Eddie can see the look he’s getting, and it doesn’t betray a stellar first impression. However, Eddie’s been in Central City for six days, hearing snide comments meant to assess his personality. At this point, he’s glad for the silence and the shrug and the promise to have the lab results within forty-eight hours.

The one thing Allen does is deliver – Eddie’s quietly impressed with the detailed information in the report that’s on his table thirty-seven hours later. He wonders then if he’ll ever manage to get to know this guy better; however, the next two weeks are filled with homicides and Eddie’s barely sleeping, going from crime scene to crime scene. He tells himself the bonding will have to wait – strangely, the other guys start to respect him a little as he proves a useful addition to the department. Well, at the very least, they stop disrespecting him openly, which seems like a step in the right direction.

And then, the reactor blows up, and Fred Chyre gets shot. Eddie’s not happy about that, of course, but Joe West seems like a competent cop and a good guy, despite being one of those who’ve been giving Eddie suspicious looks from the beginning. 

So he actually means it when he says he’ll take Joe’s shifts so he can go be with Allen in the hospital. Eddie feels a little awkward asking about the guy’s health since they haven’t even had a real conversation before the lightning struck the lab, but he asks anyway, whenever Joe comes back to the station with circles under his eyes speaking of long hours on a hard chair by his kid’s bed. That’s one of the first things Eddie learns about Barry Allen – that he’s basically Joe’s son, in all but blood and name.

It’s not the first thing – the first thing was that Allen is pretty damn cute. Or was – Eddie’s got no idea what the lightning has done to him, since it’s not his place to visit someone who’s basically a stranger in a hospital, much less when the guy’s in a coma. But from what Eddie saw before the accident, Allen’s got eyes that make Eddie want to stare until he can determine what color exactly they are, and a goofy grin, and he’s lean in a way that fits exactly into what Eddie would call ‘his type’.

A week after Allen’s accident, Joe’s daughter comes bearing caffeinated gifts from heaven when Eddie’s basically falling face-first onto his desk from exhaustion, and it turns out she’s his type too. They start talking, tentatively at first, ten-minute coffee breaks slowly stretching to twenty, then into half-hours and hours until they forget to look at the time (but that happens only months later). Mostly, she needs someone to listen to her unload about Barry, who is her best friend, basically a brother; so Eddie does, intrigued as to how much of his ideas about Allen are actually true. 

As weeks fly by, she stops talking about her comatose friend and starts talking about herself, starts listening to Eddie, too, sometimes, and he likes her, he genuinely does. She’s sharp and bright and sometimes, she’s too much even for herself – Eddie knows how it feels to be at that stage in life when everything’s either not enough or too much, when it’s not easy to figure out where one fits in the grand scheme of things, without having to stretch oneself too thin, without cutting off anything important. So he doesn’t mind that she seems distracted sometimes, that her interests shift; it’s refreshing, in a way, and he can see the Iris she will be in a few years emerging slowly, day by day, with every decision she makes. He’s half in love even with the incomplete picture of her – when he puts his foot in his mouth as he so often does, she laughs with him and touches his arm and doesn’t need him to be perfect, and Eddie decides she’s worth the risk he will be taking if he starts dating her. She doesn’t want her father to know, and Eddie’s fine with that; he knows that sometimes, keeping some crucial truth a secret feels like the only option.

He doesn’t want to keep secrets from her. He tells her that he’s bisexual a few weeks into their relationship, when things are still new and exciting and fragile, and it wouldn’t hurt so much if his truth breaks them. She smiles and shrugs and takes Eddie’s hand, stopping his mad rant about how it doesn’t mean he would ever cheat on her or that he has to sleep with guys and girls at the same time, how she doesn’t have to worry-

She kisses him, and they watch TV together, and Iris laughs at the silly show and drops her feet into Eddie’s lap. They make ridiculous lists of people they’re allowed to cheat with that night, and they have a playful argument about whether or not they’re both allowed to have Oliver Queen on the list. Eddie can’t quite believe his luck, and he keeps waiting for the other shoe to drop, for Iris to get uncomfortable or insecure or just weird about his sexuality, but it never comes up in any conversation they have in the next three months.

Then Barry Allen comes back to work, as if he didn’t spend the better part of a year without any signs of life except what shows up on beeping machines, and Eddie’s genuinely pleased to see him. By now, he knows a lot more about Barry, mostly from Iris and partly from his blog that she showed him once; it’s all about crazy cases that lean towards supernatural fiction, but Eddie reads it all anyway, finding some bits intriguing and some just funny in a dry, unintentional way. 

Of course, Barry doesn’t know anything about Eddie, not really – but Eddie still can’t help but feel friendly towards the guy. Eddie can also see the glances Barry keeps stealing when Iris isn’t looking, the way his face twists just a little, his eyes turning sad for a split second when Eddie steps into the room and Iris turns to him with a bright smile. He can’t understand how Iris doesn’t see it; she’s usually quick to pick up clues about anything else. He wonders if Barry told her how he felt sometime in the past and she turned him down, and now they’re both trying hard to push their relationship back into the friendship zone, or Iris just doesn’t want to see. He doesn’t blame her, not really, but it still tugs at his heart to see Barry look at them like it pains him, forcing a smile on his face when Iris is watching. Eddie appreciates the guy all the more for this – it would be easy for him to go to Joe and drop a few hints, take revenge on the guy who stole the girl he loves. 

Eddie’s not sure what possesses him to tell Barry that he felt threatened by him; maybe it’s the way Barry acts, the way his words work when he talks about himself. Like he doesn’t think he’s good enough for Iris, like he doesn’t believe she could love him like that – and that’s just a load of bullshit, but maybe Barry’s still too young to know love doesn’t operate on the level of ‘enough’. He doesn’t believe Eddie either, and it’s just ridiculous, making Eddie wonder what kind of people Barry has met in his life; it’s hard to believe that no one else would see what Eddie sees, that this guy is smart and funny and kind, and not hard on the eyes either. Maybe Barry is the one who never saw others looking at him like that, too focused on that one girl who thinks of him as a brother. 

Maybe all he needs is another friend, one he’s not pining after, to build up his confidence – Eddie’s glad to take that task upon himself, since he’s drawn to Barry anyway. So he drags Barry with him to the Keystone brewery, and his heart stops a little as Barry gets punched in the face. And later, when Barry holds that punching bag for him, he has to laugh when Barry throws him a completely skeptical look as Eddie confesses to having been bullied at school. He wants to help the guy, so he eggs him on to punch harder, harder, shows Barry how to throw a punch and to keep them coming, how to duck away from an opponent’s fist, and he realizes with a twist to his stomach that he’s flirting. Innocently, good-naturedly… but he’s still flirting, and he can’t deny that his eyes stray a little too often to Barry’s toned arms as he thinks that the guy must be working out, because this kind of muscle definition does not come from pushing papers all day. 

Then the call about Iris comes and the guilt burns Eddie from the inside out; he loves her, he loves her, and he would never forgive himself if something happened to her while he was busy ogling her best friend. In the end, she’s okay, but Eddie still feels like he should stop. He thought he was being a friend to Barry, that the pull he feels was simply a wish to know the guy better: as Joe put it, Eddie doesn’t exactly ‘knock back beers’ with his partner and the only person with whom he has a deeper bond in Central City so far is Iris. It’s understandable that he thought that was all he wanted from Barry Allen – but he can’t really lie to himself, he’s old enough to know the difference between being drawn to somebody on a purely platonic level and wondering what he sounds like when he’s being kissed.

He tries to keep up his friendly demeanor without fueling this attraction to Barry; and he’s mostly successful. He’s a responsible adult, he keeps reminding himself - and it mostly works. When he’s attacked by the Streak or Red Guy or whatever the psycho’s current nickname is, he’s in the middle of an argument with Iris, feeling like crap because he’s mostly angry at her for meeting danger like it’s a celebrity, but a tiny part of his anger comes from the fact that he’s not being one-hundred percent honest with Iris, even though he keeps trying to persuade himself that there’s nothing to tell.

Barry brings him coffee and donuts the next day, looking miserable as his eyes linger on Eddie’s scraped-up face; he smiles and says his thanks. Barry seems to be warming up to him, if he’s worried about Eddie after he was attacked; and Eddie can do it, he can be Barry’s friend AND Iris’ boyfriend and push away any untoward thoughts about Barry’s arms. He’s not going to screw things up, for any of them.

There’s more coffee the next day, and the next, and the day after that. It’s either waiting on Eddie’s desk when he’s been away for a moment or it’s accompanied by this strange, unreadable look on Barry’s face. Eddie tries to decode it, but he’s too busy for a few days to really give it any thought. Not that Barry’s far from his side too often; when Eddie needs a pen, it’s Barry who hands it to him. When he’s carrying a stack of files and slips on the stairs, it’s Barry’s hand that steadies him, warm and unsettling on Eddie’s back, like it’s burning through his shirt – but that’s not Barry’s fault. When Eddie needs lab results, they’re on his desk almost immediately, and Eddie’s a good cop because he can read the clues, draw lines between separate points and occasions and make the conclusions that need to be made. 

When the coffee keeps coming and the looks on Barry’s face read more and more as guilt, Eddie just can’t ignore it anymore; there’s only thing Barry could feel guilty about when it comes to Eddie. Well, two, but Iris hasn’t said anything and she still acts oblivious when Barry’s near, so it can’t have anything to do with Barry’s feelings for her.

It can have a lot to do with Barry’s… something for Eddie. 

He watches for clues: the coffee and the donuts are obvious, and could still be dismissed as a friendly gesture, if Eddie chose Iris’ approach of blissful ignorance. But he doesn’t want to do that; he knows that the unspoken often hurts just as much as words or actions. And shit… he has to admit it becomes harder and harder to even attempt to ignore this whole mess when Barry just keeps popping up when Eddie needs him, a file here, an evidence bag there, a protein bar that one time when he doesn’t have time for breakfast and his stomach growls loudly at the crime scene. 

He wants to ignore it, he really does… but he’s just not that kind of a guy. So when he goes up to Barry’s lab and Barry’s practically admitting that he’s going to stay through the night for a scrap of evidence just because Eddie brought it, he can’t keep quiet anymore.  
He tries to be subtle, but Barry demands an explanation. Well, at least that’s what it feels like, with his hand on Eddie’s arm, a touch that’s searing a brand of guilt into Eddie’s skin and he says Eddie’s name like he’s afraid of it, afraid of what Eddie’s going to say… he can’t just ignore it, he wants to… but he ends up grabbing Barry by the shoulders and that just makes it worse, the proximity cracking the barriers of personal space and Eddie finds that he wants to just hold Barry there, never let him get away further than he is in this moment when Eddie can almost feel him vibrating with restless energy. 

“Don’t do this, Allen. I’m sorry if I’ve given you a wrong impression- well, not entirely wrong,” he smirks at himself, unable to look at Barry anymore. He’s just admitted his own guilt, and he doesn’t know how it reflects in Barry’s eyes, but he’s afraid to look, he’s afraid to find acceptance more than refusal because it was infinitely easier to be a friend to Barry when he thought the guy was straight and completely drowning in his love for Iris; if Eddie sees the attraction he feels towards Barry mirrored in the guy’s eyes, he’s going to break (something or someone).

He tries to be firm, tries to remind them both where he stands, with whom he stands, but Barry just looks confused, lost, and Eddie can feel his own words like a heavy weight in his heart. He’s going to hell, and his denial tactics isn’t working anymore.

Barry’s lips are warm and dry and Eddie doesn’t linger long enough to know how they taste like; he has a feeling it would be impossible to pull away if he does. His world shifts into a much scarier version of itself in that slow second anyway, and Eddie mutters an excuse, hurries away, unable to think about how Barry’s feeling right now because he’s too terrified to have space in his head to think about anyone else.  
His whole life, he’s been fighting against the prejudiced view that just because he’s bi, he would cheat on someone he loves, that one person would never be enough for him. He’s been hurt for this very reason, he’s gone through breakups because his significant other decided not to trust him. And in all of it, Eddie always had his righteous rage to keep him afloat, his absolute, unshakable belief that he would never do anything like this, that all those people were just wrong about him and he needed to find someone who would get it, get him. It’s not even that Barry’s a guy; it’s just that he never thought he would be able to fall for two people at once. Whoever said that the heart has a limitless capacity for love was lying, because Eddie’s chest hurts with how much there is in it all of a sudden. It hurts, and he can already feel the cracks. 

He can suddenly understand why people just keep quiet sometimes, why Iris pretends not to see… it’s going to be hard to restore the balance after this. Shaken, Eddie walks to his desk, grabs his phone and keys and jacket, and ignores the paper cup of coffee that appeared on his desk this morning. 

He needs to see Iris… he needs to remind himself who he is, and who he refuses to become. And he has to make this right. No matter what.


End file.
